UW Sports Seattle - Requiring 6" Nitrox Sticker ---ARRRGH!

[KOMPRESSOR]

Doc,

As it happens I was in the shop last Friday with my double E8-130's and asked for a top off.

No can do! The discussion started and ended when they said that without the large bands they would not fill them. The fact that the cylinders just got cleaned and stickered for Oxygen service two weeks ago did not even come in to play.

I do think that even a novice diver would notice the difference in weight between a single aluminum 80 and double steel 130's, and the DIN manifold might make their regulator a bit of a difficult fit.

I had been planning on just getting my cylinders filled at the shop that Lynne reccomended, but since my dive buddies had rented gear from this shop I figured that I could get topped off while I was there.

I had similar experiences when I lived in Virginia with the silly bands.

Some things just make me scratch my head.

Mark Vlahos

So, what's new?

An everlasting problem is novices with less diving experience and gear handling experience who've been taken almost right out of OWD and hired in as shop crew. After a very short while they feel overconfident with their work. And who wouldn't in a monotonous working environment? Then in walks someone like us who have different habits and approaches than what's thaught in PADI OWD and we easily have a major crash with the shop crew when they do not understand what the heck we are talking about, and do not have the obvious (to them) green sticker.

I get tanks already O2-cleaned from my supplier. They are market with GUE stickers, and fo my own sake I'm always putting on labels with specification of the mix in the tanks.

This is of no help to me in some of the major dive stores unless there's a big green sticker as well on them. I can say what I want about it, but it will be Greek to most of the staff at these stores. The problem goes all the way. As long as there's a big green sticker they won't even bother to ask wether the tanks are O2-clean for partial fills!!!

I think this is a rather big problem when those who should guide the public, the divers, knows less than us.

(Yes, I have run my own LDS, but since I have no staff I'm up front at the desk myself, so we don't have this problem...)